space Press Releases, News Stories

By Terry Scanlon, Daily Press

FORT EUSTIS, Virginia, 15 September 2002 -- Cleaning up the Ghost Fleet might be put on hold at least another year, as it takes a back seat to fighting the war on terror, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis told government officials Saturday.

Scrapping the most hazardous ships in what's officially called the James River Reserve Fleet is a lower priority on Capitol Hill than homeland security and a looming war with Iraq, she said.

When Congress completes work on the federal budget in coming weeks, there might be - at best - enough money to scrap a small, decaying part of the cluster of ships, said Davis, a Republican who represents much of the Peninsula.

"Nobody up there wants to cut money for visa-entry inspections to get rid of a ship and then have a terrorist come in and blow up another building," she said.

Davis' gloomy budget prediction occurred during a contentious three-hour meeting among officials from all levels of government that illustrated the rift between state and federal officials on the issue.

Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner has threatened to sue the federal government if it doesn't at least remove the thousands of gallons of oil from the ships in the fleet that are no longer valuable.

Officials with the U.S. Maritime Administration, the agency that manages the reserve fleet, spent much of the meeting explaining the problem to local government officials, dispelling myths and deflecting criticism.

Many of the nearly 100 ships moored in the James off Fort Eustis are in good enough condition that they can be deployed in only a few days, said Jeff McMahon, a Norfolk-based MARAD official. Two ships were activated Saturday to assist the Navy during an undisclosed coming mission.

"We have many ships that are national-security assets," McMahon said.

But 21 ships are in such bad shape, they need to be scrapped as soon as possible, he said.

Salt water has eaten away at the hulls through the years. In some, there are thumb-sized dimples where the steel hulls have thinned and pose the risk of an oil leak.

Oil from the ships has reached the water on at least nine occasions in the past decade. But MARAD officials say there's been only one significant spill - a 1,000-gallon leak two years ago from a ship that's now gone.

State and local officials fear that a spill of thousands of gallons could cause an environmental disaster that could kill countless birds and fish, as well as damage the fishing and tourism industries.

Warner has portrayed a worst-case scenario as something similar to the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska more than a decade ago.

McMahon said that's almost impossible. On each ship, the oil is stored in 20 to 25 compartments, which limits a spill when the side of a ship is punctured. Also, much of the oil is so old, it's to thick to seep through small holes.

Robert Burnley, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, questioned the security of the ships. A terrorist in a kayak, he said, could carry enough explosives to blow a hole in the side of a ship, similar to the hole blown in the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

McMahon said that the fleet was inspected daily and that a crew was on patrol at all times.

Another concern that state officials have expressed is the possibility of the ships breaking free of their moorings and drifting aimlessly. Some folks fear that one of the ships could slam into the James River Bridge.

McMahon said an unstaffed ship would be much more likely to run aground in a shallow part of the river than it would be to navigate the deeper shipping channel down the river.

To avoid these problems in the future, a new system of anchors is being installed that's designed to withstand a 100-year storm, McMahon said. The more than $4 million project is expected to be completed next summer, he said.

The new anchors would also prevent problems like the ships that broke partly free from their cable moorings last month after an experimental military ship sped by the fleet, he said.

Offering some new insight into the incident, McMahon said the military ship was going about 45 mph, kicking up a 35-foot rooster tail and sending a 9-foot-high wave across the river.

The wave lifted one of the ships so high, the cable connecting it with a neighboring ship snapped, he said. There were no injuries, and no oil leaked from the ship.

The reserve fleet has been moored in the James River since the end of World War I.

Environmental risks from the ships began to mount only after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency prohibited MARAD from selling ships to companies scrapping them in foreign ports with few environmental regulations, said James E. Caponiti, acting deputy administrator for inland waterways.

In addition to oil, the ships have a cancer-causing substance called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which has been out of use for decades.

Since the EPA restrictions, MARAD's ship-scrapping program has almost ceased. With stricter work-force and environmental regulations, U.S. companies don't buy the old ships from MARAD.

Two years ago, MARAD spent $10 million scrapping nine ships. This past year, the agency didn't get any money to do that.

In the past few weeks, MARAD has received 40 proposals from private companies to scrap ships. Officials provided few details because the proposals are under review, but they said most of them required spending millions of dollars.

After the meeting, Newport News Mayor Joe Frank summarized much of the frustration felt by local officials:

"It's clear to me that they need to move forward with finding the money and not keep pointing the finger at somebody else. The federal government created this problem. They need to come up with the money."

Just removing the oil from the ships would cost about $500,000 a ship, MARAD officials said. Some of the oil compartments can be difficult to access, and much of the oil has become so thick, it needs to be heated before it can be pumped.

Davis said it wouldn't cost much more to get rid of the ships altogether by sinking them to build reefs.

The top-ranking Hampton Roads official for the Coast Guard, which would play an important role in cleaning up any oil spill, cautioned against just removing oil from the ships. If the ships remain in the river without the oil, then Congress might have little incentive to pay for scrapping the ships in the future, Capt. Larry Brooks said.

"If we're not careful," he said, "we could end up with the James River reserve reef out there."

Terry Scanlon can be reached at 247-7821 or by e-mail at tscanlon@dailypress.com